Excess Genny use

[Chandalen]

This is probably a rant.. with a question... what would you do, and how would you take it if someone did it to you?

Background..
*Campers in a 30' pull behind moved in at the next pad. Its a state park with genny hours from 0900-1100 and 1700-2100.
*Their first night it seems they had no power at all as they were using flashlights inside the camper.
*I saw they had a single Group 27 on the front, that was disconnected (at the neg terminal).
*Next day they had their truck plugged into the trailer plug and the battery was connected. They ran the truck for about 3 hours.
*I talked to him briefly and he said the battery was not charging. I said well.. your battery is probably toast, and there is no way your truck is gonna charge it. 'But I have a 30 amp alternator.' Insert sigh and eye roll here.
*Well sure enough that night they were on flashlights again.
*Today... at 0800 guess what... a BRAND NEW GENERATOR fires up!!
*(0900-1100 are generator hours)
*I have seen it before, and I dont think its safe, but they had an 'igloo' type box over it to dampen the noise. Ok.. whatever. However.. about 3' from the exhaust is a 5 gallon red gas can.
*Now, its 11:50 and that genny is still running.
*My wife, who is way more 'in your face' than me.. asked him to turn it off and his answer was simply 'my battery isnt charged yet (laughing and walking away)
*She wants to go get Ranger Rick and have them tell him to cut it off, and I dont want to have to worry about my stuff getting screwed with when we are gone lol!

Ideas???

[mike_mck]

1L243 wrote:
Boondocking is great for one week had a group about a 1/4 mile from me running up the dirt road at 60mph, yelling, screaming shooting They left their site cluttered with trash and bear cans, was a lovely week, but heck it was free!...

Guess you need to come to Az. I'm in the mountains most every weekend. Lots of state and national forest here. Can't see or hear my fellow campers. Yes I do run my LP generator every morning to make sure my house battery is charged. Running a CPAP at night.

Guess I'm lucky I never run into to the issues you describe.
If I would have run into the situation you described I would have moved. Plenty of open space. It is really easy to move the TC and utility trailer. Life is too short to be pissed off all the time. But that's just me.

[jwmII]

Seasoned campers, RVers, and all outdoors types know better than to try and go to a popular and heavily populated recreation area on a holiday week end. That's when all the amateurs and rudes and inconsiderates show up. They barely know their name and where they are and YOU are the last thing on their feeble minds. It's all about them. So with that in mind ,Just stay home. The following week end you will probably have the place of your choice to yourselves.
If you must go on the holiday though you should take your imagination with you instead of complaining about your camping neighbors, A potato, a broken spark plug and many other imaginative things work quite well to restore the neighborhood quiet. In other words Fish or Cut Bait but quit *****ing about it.

[Crabbypatty]

I have no problem telling them to turn it off and the same goes for the DP whose pipe comes out the drivers side. One guy was gassing us out and said he didn't realize about it. Told him to buy the long pipe and pipe it up over his roof.

Most of the time people just don't think and a gentle reminder is enough. Then again you get non rver's who once a year go out and terrorize the rest of us. Ranger rick is definitely an option I the am so they can be spoken to more firmly by someone other than you. As for the one suggestion, we generally avoid the weekends as much as possible and completely avoid the holiday seasons.

[down_home]

mlts22 wrote:

Chandalen wrote:
As mentioned. Charging with an idling car (via the trailer plug) is a waste of gas. Your getting 3-5 amps at best. With jumper cables it's better but....

Realistically, the only way I see getting high amperage from a vehicle to the RV would be to have a secondary alternator which puts out 120 volts that would plug into the electrical input of the rig, or a 12 volt inverter coupled with a PSW alternator. Trying to run 12 volts even from an alternator would require that are very fat.

our Ford Dualie had twin alternators. 145amp each. It had heavy relays and heavy wires and a 20amp cartridge type fuse back to our fifth wheel.
Where they worked on it they tried to raise the front of the fifth wheel to hook it up to the truck, wit a weak batter and connectd it up tto the truck and two huge truck batteries. Fried the fuse, the only only one they didn't put in the kit under the hood. Took an hour to buy two more. The truck charged it up in a bout 15 minutes. I put a second battery box and batter and cables and vent tube, supplied by Holiday Rambler for free. Never had that happen again. Should have installed four batteries perhaps.

[down_home]

RDMueller wrote:
We have really started to gravitate towards CGs with electric hookups because of this very issue. Even though we are perfectly happy dry camping, we are doing it less and less because it seems that we frequently end up near someone who runs a construction type genny for 4+ hours/day.

On a recent trip we had a guy in the next site with a Honda Eu and we barely even noticed it running. But the guy 5 sites away with the construction genny almost made us give up and leave! Completely ruined the experience... It was so funny too, we were 5 sites away and it was driving us crazy. The people with the gen were sitting at the picnic table having breakfast with that thing about 5 ft away! What part of that could possibly have been in any way enjoyable???

In my personal opinion, that type of gen should only be used for short periods, maybe to use the microwave, brew coffee or for a hairdryer. To run for a couple hours for battery charging, gotta have a quiet inverter gen.
Those cheaper Chinese generators are quite loud. Perhaps a suggestion to USFS about noise standards would help.
Since I don't have one I'm not sure what the is making all the noise.
If it is the exhaust, we use to repair lawnmowers all the time, never needed to buy a new one, and there were a variety of mufflers. We made some interesting sights with water pipe and small and large mufflers. The threads in the old Briggs and Strations were standard 1/2 inch pipe threads.
Our on board diesel Onan could use quietening down. Perhaps they make a better muffler. If nothing else a plywood box a good bit larger than the generator with holes for air to engine and exhaust, but not the exhaust sticking way out might work. Onan or others could make a bit of change selling a good muffler and pipe to people with these noisy chicoms.
This is what happend in ant colony, someone is always banging into yo u and stepping on your feet and playing loud country and western hip hop.
Look at their brocures, on the net and pick a site you want such as evening sun to yur back patio facing east.
My goal is tow or thrre sites we like, buying them, instalaling wells an septic a and capping it all off. When we arrive hook up to generator and well.Extra deep Cycles would do good ad the soalr most certainly charge up a battery bank. MIght not have to run gennie much at all, unless a codl frot comes through. aS big pad fancy as you want it, flowers maybe large pond with small fish and So, yes, I totally share your frustration!

make it much better with our own pad on your ow property. PUt one in this year and two next year all using solar and battery banks and generators and wells. ZOnly bill would be taxes and some diesel. Don't forget the little or big pad box or building that might be cover, cantilevered over your coach and pad for shade, weather, and solar panels on top. One acre or two 20 to 15 to 20,000..maybe nt that much On two acres their noise may not annoy you if you plant a double avenue of 6 ft cedars around the perimiter. Buy fie acres and have nine holes of golf or 20 acres and a 18 holes,your own firearm and skeet range, free style pool fed by springs around here. While you are at one, of the others, rent it out and get them to keep it up, to your standard. Put it on lake Superior or thevery tip of lake Michigan, not much snow there, in winter and you can ice fish all winter and drive to where you want to go.
@0 acres is the question. Perhaps 30,000 American then ten to fifteen for everything else. So for the price of a cheap Caddy you have a 100% double throw down personal resort. Next you will put a house on it.
A fifty thousand dollar prime site, this year, a sixty thousand site next year. Rent them while not there and well tht is heaven. A few extra plugs and connections and buried water line from pump you can bring in your friends and charge them and wala you have another income stream and choice of where to stay this summer or build a neww somewhere.
Anybody do all this remember who suggested it. We will take real good care of your pad, on Superior of MMicigan, or new Brunswick.

[down_home]

Let the Ranger know. They will enforce the rules.
You are on vacation however long term or short term that might be as an RVer.
I would not go Rambo on him even thought I know you and everyone else wants to.
Ranger doesn't show up I would tell him as politely as possible, that is, ask him again. he disregards you, if other RVers are up around him, if you've been visiting with them and comfortable they will go with you, as they are being disturbed too, as a group demand he shut it off. Don't work, call the sheriff.
This is one reason I prefer to RV at a Military Campground. Retired and Other former and active Military families play by the rules, and respect others, that I have seen. 🙂

[mlts22]

Chandalen wrote:
As mentioned. Charging with an idling car (via the trailer plug) is a waste of gas. Your getting 3-5 amps at best. With jumper cables it's better but....

Realistically, the only way I see getting high amperage from a vehicle to the RV would be to have a secondary alternator which puts out 120 volts that would plug into the electrical input of the rig, or a 12 volt inverter coupled with a PSW alternator. Trying to run 12 volts even from an alternator would require that are very fat.

[reed_cundiff]

I see the problem having gone through the entire thread. Most of the respondents live in the east and there really is very little dispersed camping. The mountain and desert west is fairly good for dispersed camping so long as it is not a National Park, not to close to a major city, and not a three-day weekend. Most of the folks we meet at dispersed sites (which is unusual) have fair to excellent solar and good battery suites so that generator noise is almost non-existent.

Some National Parks do have large no-generator sections (Most of Fishing Bridge CG in Yellowstone). The result was that we were able to stay a week with moderate solar on old rig and most of the others were out of electrical storage in a few days and had to leave
Reed and Elaine

[traveylin]

Well Chaldean,,,, the way your self acknowledged rant starts, I kinda feel sorry for your neighbor being evaluated to the detail that occurred. I mean there are nontechnical folks trying to mainstream and they need support not derision. Were this to occur on a college campus today you would be found guilty of a perceived aggression. The frat houses manage this pc by drinking another beer

[Chandalen]

As mentioned. Charging with an idling car (via the trailer plug) is a waste of gas. Your getting 3-5 amps at best. With jumper cables it's better but....

[pnichols]

We have been to one campground in CA with "partial hookups" - only a water faucet and 120V 20A AC buried in tall grass along the perimeter of each campsite. Each campsite was spread well away from it's neighbors - probably each campsite taking up at least 1/2 acre.

That was "nirvana" ... it felt like ultra-quiet boondocking combined with enough hookups to stay for days in complete comfort rain or shine, hot or cold. Some of the campsites were completely shaded. Many of the campsites were right by a lake filled with fish, too. Your boat could be moored overnights in the shade of trees on the shore closest to your site easily walkable to/from your site.

That's my kind of camping with an RV .... but extremely rare.

As far as dry camping with a generator is concerned .... we have two generators along with us: The built-in Onan for serious RV power, and a small discontinued generator quieter than modern Honda EU generators for charging of the coach batteries every 2-3 days. For just about zero-noise battery charging without relying on the sun, we idle the non-diesel main engine with it's alternator charging the battery bank.

[RDMueller]

We have really started to gravitate towards CGs with electric hookups because of this very issue. Even though we are perfectly happy dry camping, we are doing it less and less because it seems that we frequently end up near someone who runs a construction type genny for 4+ hours/day.

On a recent trip we had a guy in the next site with a Honda Eu and we barely even noticed it running. But the guy 5 sites away with the construction genny almost made us give up and leave! Completely ruined the experience... It was so funny too, we were 5 sites away and it was driving us crazy. The people with the gen were sitting at the picnic table having breakfast with that thing about 5 ft away! What part of that could possibly have been in any way enjoyable???

In my personal opinion, that type of gen should only be used for short periods, maybe to use the microwave, brew coffee or for a hairdryer. To run for a couple hours for battery charging, gotta have a quiet inverter gen.

So, yes, I totally share your frustration!

[milo]

And to think they're not just in the campgrounds...they're everywhere, rudeness & inconsiderateness is abound

[mlts22]

Part of it is that a lot of people just have not camped much without FHU, then get surprised when their open frame special from Home Depot which never was fired up until then is extremely deafening.